There’s something odd about watching stand-up in my uni’s lecture theatre. The worn-out seats and looming projector screen felt designed for note-taking, not laughter. Yet in Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre One, Alan Davies dismantled that stiffness within minutes, greeted by an ovation that felt more like a homecoming than an introduction.
Yet, the audience wasn’t made up of students. The young were the minority, which suited the theme of Think Ahead: age, and what it means to grow older in a world moving at double speed. Davies riffed on everything from Dad’s Army to Back to the Future (can you believe Christopher Lloyd had only been 46 in the first film?!), using pop culture detritus to trace the passage of time. His crowd work was instinctive and warm, the atmosphere one of familiarity, like settling into the company of a funny uncle.
The silliness was sharp. He ranted furiously about ULEZ zones, bikes, and e-scooters, with political barbs that landed neatly—never heavy-handed, always delivered with a wry twist.
Then came the shift. With startling openness, Davies spoke of the sexual abuse he had endured at the hands of his father, beginning after his mother’s death when he was six and continuing into his teenage years. In that moment, the lecture theatre changed. Laughter stilled; breath caught. It no longer felt like stand-up but something closer to communal witness. A question hovered: what had we expected from Alan Davies? The quick-witted panellist of QI? Or the 59-year-old man before us, carrying his story with extraordinary vulnerability?
The truth was, of course, both. Davies wove his darkest memories with humour, sometimes chuckling at his own lines, sometimes letting silence land heavier than any joke. One of the Fringe’s favourite moments for me came when he questioned how often his father must have visited the stationers to buy more ink in order to print off pornographic images of boys. The image of an old man bustling into Ryman’s every other day drew laughter without cheapening the trauma. Davies showed how comedy and tragedy could coexist, how humour could make pain bearable. By the end, Think Ahead felt less like a comedy show and more like a meditation on survival, ageing, and the courage of speaking out.
It wasn’t seamless. The pacing faltered, and the gravity of certain moments jarred against lighter set-pieces. Yet those imperfections lent the show its humanity. It was messy, uneven, but undeniably real.
The result was a four-star evening: funny, sobering, and unexpectedly profound. A reminder that stand-up wasn’t always about escape—it could also be about connection.
Alan Davies: Think Ahead ran from 30 July to 10 August (not 5) at Orchard at Gilded Balloon, Appleton Tower.
More information here.
Image courtesy of Tony Briggs, provided to The Student as press material.